Rosanne Cash at the Pace Center in Parker (photos, review)

The first half of Rosanne Cash’s concert Friday night amounted to 67 of the best minutes ever to pass in Parker, Colorado.

Cash has a new album, the triple Grammy-nominated “The River & The Thread,” and she played the whole thing, in order. It was a pure and simple performance full of self-respect, for both the 11 songs, which she co-wrote with her husband and guitarist John Leventhal, and for Cash’s own musical heritage as a daughter of American roots music.

The band stayed true to the recording, which has received high praise for its sincerity, recreating it nearly note-for-note, without a lot of live-performance flourishes, like extended solos and grandiose finishes. This kept the material’s veracity fully in place, and in the 500-seat Parker Arts, Culture and Events Center, the concert felt like a night of old-fashioned story-telling set to music.

“The River” works especially well as a set unto itself. The couple composed it after several road trips through the deep South. Johnny Cash’s daughter may have grown up in California and made her adult home in New York, but she easily picked up on the spirit of the blues, soul, country and gospel that define the region and infused those ideas into a series of updated, rock-infused songs. The lyrics tell of Southern beauty and pride, but also of poverty and racism; it’s a thorough picture.

And Cash’s vocal talents keep it real. She has a natural plaintive quality in her singing that prevents the whole effort from feeling like musical tourism. Her voice is never pure, just the opposite, really. Her tone varies within each syllable and phrase, though that’s a strength not a weakness. If a note is hard to get she goes even harder for it and the result is a stunning candor and vulnerability, an elevation of the song over the singer, art over ego, that commands attention.

That was on display from the opener “A Feather’s Not a Bird,” with its purposeful low notes to “Money Road,” with its metered irony.

Cash reels you in, as well, with her banter. Each song gets a short, simple introduction. No long stories or overly personal anecdotes, but a simple explanation, or easy one-liner, to set the stage. “Sunken Lands,” she told the audience, was inspired by her grandmother in Arkansas, who “raised seven children, picked cotton and was married to a man who wasn’t kind.” She described the sweet melody of “Night School” as “Johnny Mercer-ish, Stephen Foster-ish.”

The evening felt personal, almost historic right up to intermission, and it was a hard act to follow, even for Cash.

The second half of the show was full of crowd-pleasers. There were a few recent songs, like “Radio Operator,” from the album “Black Cadillac,” and her old hits “Seven Year Ache.” and “Blue Moon with Heartache.”

Adding to the familiarity were selections from her recent album “The List,” recreating a selection of country music standards well-regarded by her father. There was Hank Snow’s “I’m Moving On” and the folk standard “500 Miles.” There was also a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Bille Joe,” which fit the theme of complex Southern traditions.

The set sounded swell, mostly, but lacked the gravitas of the first act and included those long solos and big finishes that weigh heavy on live shows. If this concert were a play it would have unfolded backward, with the dramatic high point revealed before the plot was fully developed. It felt like an extended encore — fun, appreciative and generous, though a bit like show biz.

It’s hard to fault a singer for being very, very good and giving fans what they want. But it’s just fine, too. Cash’s music, her whole career, has been about coming to terms with the complexity of life, of relationships, family, self-fulfillment. Her perfection comes from understanding that nothing is perfect and bringing that recognition to her listeners. In that way, the night was authentically Rosanne Cash, and a truly great time in Parker.

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Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Arts and Entertainment writer and critic at The Denver Post and a regular contributor to Reverb.

Tina Hagerling is a Denver photographer and regular contributor to Reverb. Check out more of her concert photography.